With the saturation of crop rotation with sunflowers, the development of wolfberry will progress

17/03/2023 10:45

The sunflower beetle is increasingly being noticed in the West of Ukraine, in particular, in the crops of Khmelnytskyi and Vinnytsia regions. The director of the agricultural department of the company, Oleksandr Khmelyuk, and his colleague, Oleksandr Kotygora, told about this in the LNZ Group podcast, writes SuperAgronom.com.

As experts noted, it currently does not create such problems as in the South, but with the saturation of crop rotation with sunflowers, its development will only progress.

Thus, in the South, the wolf breeds F and G are represented, in the West, race B is currently noted. Oleksandr Khmelyuk assumed that other breeds could have arrived with the harvesters from the South to the West, and therefore it is worth monitoring the fields for the appearance of the wolf now. Today, there are 9 breeds of lupus, which arose as a result of mutations and adaptation to methods of combating it.

"Race A was first noticed in 1866 in Russia, where the wolf dog passed from the wormwood. Race B was recorded in 1925. Race C — Moldavian type recorded in 1960, race E — in 1990. Race F was recorded in 1997 in Romania and Spain, races C and A are quite aggressive, recorded in Spain, Turkey and Romania. Race G is widespread in Ukraine, which was recorded 3-4 years ago in the Odesa region," said Oleksandr Kotygora.

The specialist added that the caterpillar can destroy up to 70% of the sunflower crop, and sometimes even completely. But it is necessary to fight against lupus comprehensively, taking into account the number of races that exist. He named three methods of struggle:

weeding, loosening;

use of herbicides in the Clearfield technology: wolfberry is sensitive to imidazolinones;

"Since the wolfberry is a parasitic plant and does not have its own root system, it is advisable to use herbicides in the sunflower's 2-4 leaf development phase," Oleksandr Kotygora emphasized.

the biological method is the cultivation of genetically resistant hybrids to one or another race of wolf.

According to Oleksandr Khmelyuk, the use of herbicides in combination with resistant hybrids will have the greatest effect.

"White balls, similar to nodular bacteria, form on sunflower roots. And when we introduce imazamox, imazapyr, the active substance moves into the root system, prevents the nodules from developing and thus prevents the germination of the wolfberry. That is, it is important to "feed" the wolf through the root of the plant on which it parasitizes — to suppress the wolf at the stage of development, preventing it from appearing on the surface of the soil," he explained.